Odd Words February 3, 2012

Sorry about the delay in posting but I attempted to write an entry yesterday during a class break and lost my connections (and all my work1) while posting. It was then time to read Chaucer before class. Chaucer is rapidly becoming one of my favorite classes, having forgotten from my survey course 30 years ago what a dirty minded bastard he was (or perhaps they thought it too racy for our tender, sophmore ears back then). An essential requirement to understanding Chaucer is a dirty mind so I do struggle a bit, which should surprise no one. Discovering the root of the work prick as used colloquially is traced back to “prikyasour” or horseman is starting to get fun in spite of Middle English.

I had two-finger pecked out such a clever lead yesterday about keeping up with things like this around schoolwork, but the quirkiness of the University of New Orleans wireless network (and my $79 Android tablet) foiled me. Anyway, I was up all Wednesday night until midnight catching up on my reading, in class most of the day and out on errands the rest so I didn’t get this posted yesterday, the first time in over two years I’ve missed a Thursday. As an old newspaper man the idea that you never miss an edition is deeply ingrained, so I apologize. And I had listed last night’s event at Garden District Books last Thursday, so no harm, no foul.

& Tonight at the New Orleans Museum of Art literature will join the visual arts for Artfully AWARE. Featured at this events are a literary reading organized by the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society, and a reading of original poetry and prose read by students from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. 3 p.m. Friday, 1Oct. 3 at MOMA.

& And every Friday the Red Star Gallery hosts its spoken word performance. The Gallery is on Bayou Road just off Broad. Doors at 9 p.m. and show at 10 p.m. Admission $5 with a college ID, $7 without.

& If you prefer your literature taken with the owner’s selection of jazz during the Jazz Happy Hour at the Love Lost Lounge (which is fantastic) you can instead check out the No Love Lost Poetry Reading at the self-same lounge also starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 3.

& I haven’t gotten a February listing for the Maple Leaf Poetry Series but I imagine something fascinating will be going on at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 5

& Also on Sunday The Faulkner Society will present it’s program: My New Orleans: In the Crescent City, Gorilla Men East Steak as previously announced on Sunday, October 9. However, we have changed the time so that you all can watch the Saints beat the Carolina Panthers on TV and then come out to celebrate their victory with us.
The new starting time for the event is 4 p. m. 624 Pirate’s Alley on Super Bowl Sunday, Oct. 5.

& Also on Monday The Writer’s Block meets on the steps of the amphitheater across from Jackson Square open to all writers and performers in any art. Once I get my Chaucerian pronunciation down, I’ll be there juggle chain saws and reciting. OK, maybe not juggling. Maybe I could manage to stand on one foot. For a while.

& On Tuesday Octavia books remind us it’s carnival time; so, please join us for a reading, presentation and booksigning with Sherry Alexander featuring her recent book, COURTROOM CARNIVAL: Famous New Orleans Trials. She will be joined by one of the co-authors, Lyn Koppel (“Darleen Jacobs: Miss New Orleans, Larger Than Life.”) From Edwin Edwards’ outlandish antics to Chicken King Al Copeland’s romantic entanglements, this is a collection of stories about 10 of New Orleans’s most memorable high-profile litigants. Tuesday, Oct. 6 at 6 p.m.

& Finally, an early shout out for the spring season of 17 Poets! at the Goldmine Saloon, featuring February Bill Lavender signs and reads from his new book Memory Wing (Black Widow Press, 2011). Next Thursday, Feb. 9 at the Gold Mine Saloon, doors at 7 p.m. with no admission. If you missed the spring schedule posting, it is in last week’s Odd Words.

If I’ve missed you event, it is probably because you did not send it to oddwords@gmail.com.

That’s about it, as the book stores really haven’t cracked up again after the holidays and soon carnival will be upon us in full force. Odd Words will be back next week. On . Even if I have to finger-peck it out on the tantrum-prome tablette using UNO’s quirky internet service. Maybe Bobby Jindal made them turn off half of their broadcast points to save money but what do you expect from a Dartmouth graduate in biology who professes a belief in Creationism? Perhaps he would prefer we stay home and study our Bibles. Having been raised Catholic long ago I was aware of this thing Bible, that big gold book that the priest and a few chosen lay acolytes read from on Sundays. I was not, however, allowed to read it myself until high school and the teacher’s did not explicate much less revel in the racy bits as my Chaucer professor does.

The Typist

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About Toulouse Street

Toulouse Street began as a memoir of place, subtitled Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, an attempt to capture "the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or is not a place,"* Leopold Bloom crossing Royal Street.

Over time is has grown in strange ways. It is, to borrow novelist Tim O'Brien's line: A Fiction. It is loosely based on the life of a man of late middle age racing frantically towards and away from death. Any apparently auto-biographical bits are about "me", The Typist, in the sense that the ringing of wind chimes is about the weather.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is chronologically orthogonal.

Odd Words was birthed in 2010 as a prominent feature when the local newspaper folded its Books page and literary listings disappeared from the scene. To see your event listed there, contact odd.words.nola@gmail.com no later than Saturday of the week prior to the event.

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All original work here (www.toulousestreet.net, toulousestreet.wordpress.com) is (c) 2006-2016 by Mark A. Folse
Any outside copyrighted material presented here is done so for the purposes of news reporting and comment consistent with USC 17 Chapter 1 Title 107. Any copyrighted work or trademarks presented here remain the property of their owners.
For content titled Odd Words, see the Creative Commons notice.

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